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Sunday, July 17, 2016

Satruday

It's been an interesting weekend. Lots of twists and turns. As soon as I think things are going in a certain direction, things change and then I found myself moving in a completely different direction. Here are the highlights....

1). As many of you know, Curtis received a new calling on his mission. He went from being District Leader to now being a Trainer. We received a nice letter the other day from his Mission President letting us know about the change. I love that we get these letters. They will be nice to add to our sons mission book with all the other things we have added along the way. I also love that my son is loving every single minute of his mission. That's how we have always wanted it to be. No regrets. No concern about home. Our missionary just busy doing the things the Lord would have him do. I am so happy this is exactly what has been happening for him. This makes me a proud and happy Mom! Here is that letter.

2). Friday afternoon, I called our mechanic for a status update on the repairs on our car. Now, mind you, our mechanic is quite amazing!! He literally has worked a miracle and we are extremely grateful for ALL he has done. He has gone above and beyond in absolutely every way possible. We cannot thank him enough. Unfortunately the repairs on the car took him a lot longer than we all thought they would take, especially our mechanic. Part of the problem was coming up with the funding to pay for the repairs. It took a little time to get the repairs to a certain point and then to come up with the funding to finish the job. AND there were curcumstances beyond everyone's control. Things like waiting for the silly car to cycle through. That took forever!! In fact, we will be dealing with that over the next few days as well. It's been four weeks straight that our car has been in the shop. That's a long time!! Not to mention it has been just as long for our married daughter to be without her car too. Needless to say, our mechanic worked all night to get our car fixed and ended up dropping keys off to us at 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning. I then skipped church and went to the library when it opened at 1pm to print out a car tag and a new insurance card, so Kyle and I could go pick up the car Saturday afternoon and drop Danielle's car off to her. I cannot tell you how relieved she was to finally get her car back, and how relieved we were to be able to have ours back too! That was the best. Now to wait out the car computer to cycle through so we can get the car through emissions. We will take the car back to the mechanic to check codes this week. We are crossing our fingers all goes well and we are set to go by mid this week. Time will tell.

3) It looks like Lexi will be going back to public school this fall!! That is a huge thing. She has agreed to go back to Mesa High, but only part of the day. That took some convincing by Kevin to get Lexi to change her mind. Thankfully whatever Kevin said to her was what she needed to hear. I live that man! And I am so grateful he has the ability to talk to our kids in a way that is totally amazing. Kevin has always had that gift. It's no wonder he was in Young Men's for so many years. Looks like the first or second half of Lexi's school day will be spent at EVIT. (East Valley Institute of Technology). She wants to get some culinary training. Her dream is to go to a culinary school in New York, of all places. In fact, she wants to apply there and attend college there. Frankly, I say more power to her! BUT, then the Mom in me says, "No, stay here!" I don't want her to go so far away. I think it was a great decision to decide to go to EVIT. This way she will get some experience and learn a little bit about what she will be dealing with if she actually does finally decide to go to a culinary school. I also believe that any kind of training like this will be beneficial for her future as well. More to come on this.

4). Tonight I made enchiladas for dinner. This is something I make from time to time and my family loves them, but something was extra good about this batch. In fact, when everyone asks for seconds that's always a good sign. I will admit, I had been cheating a bit with the past several batches by not softening the corn tortillas in hot oil first like my Mom taught me to do....AND the corn tortillas I had been using were pretty bad. They would fall apart. Well, today we stopped to Safeway to pick up corn tortillas. They had an actual corn tortillas, which after softened in the oil, made excellent enchiladas. The brand I used was this one....

Love them!!! I'm so glad I found this brand. They have restored my faith in corn tortillas. Kevin said my enchiladas were very good. Yum!

5). We played a game of Settlers of Catan last night. For the past few days Kyle has been asking and asking us to play so he could, and I quote, "kick our butts". Well, we played one game last night and I won the game! Ha! I was so shocked. I never win that game. That totally blew my mind. Kyle wasn't very happy about it though. Yikes!

6). Once in a while I receive these uplifting messages through my email. They come from a work colleague who is not of my faith. Yet, the messages are always uplifting and spark my interest and usually prompt me to turn to the scriptures, conference talks, and other standard works to learn more. Sometimes I have time to read my coworkers messages and other times I don't. The other day I received one message that stopped me in my tracks. The message wasn't about anything I didn't already know or anything new that I had not heard before. In fact, it just brought back everything I was already familiar with and reminded me of a few things. The things mentioned in the message were just received at the right point that I needed the reminder. I'm always impressed how promptings come to me. Especially those that come from completely out of the blue while sitting at my desk at work, or even right in the middle of something I'm researching. It's pretty awesome and I love it. Well, my coworkers message was just like that. The message was this...

Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. Matthew 10:39

In the midday heat of summer, while traveling in the American South, my wife and I stopped for ice cream. On the wall behind the counter we saw a sign reading, “Absolutely No Snowmobiling.” The humor worked because it was so unexpected.

Sometimes saying the unexpected has the most effect. Think of this in regard to a statement by Jesus: “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:39). In a kingdom where the King is a servant (Mark 10:45), losing your life becomes the only way to find it. This is a startling message to a world focused on self-promotion and self-protection.

In practical terms, how can we “lose our life”? The answer is summed up in the wordsacrifice. When we sacrifice, we put into practice Jesus’s way of living. Instead of grasping for our own wants and needs, we esteem the needs and well-being of others.

Jesus not only taught about sacrifice but He also lived it by giving Himself for us. His death on the cross became the ultimate expression of the heart of the King who lived up to His own words: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13)

Nothing is really lost by a life of sacrifice. Henry Liddon

This message stopped me in my tracks because I needed this reminder. For several weeks now I've been frustrated because everyone in my family has watched me struggle with being the one shouldering all the responsibilities around our home since Kevin's spinal cord injury. And for the past several weeks I was okay with this burden (except for brief moments) because I felt that my family had my back and were willing to work side by side with me when I needed them. Well, that "glass floor" fell through for me over the past several weeks. I learned a lot about exactly how my family feels about things. Their comments really hurt and I found myself growing to resent everything about this whole thing, until I read this message. Then as I was reading over the message quickly before I was pulled in another direction while at work, I was reminded that I am doing exactly what the Savior himself would be doing if he could be here in our home, with our family, or on the earth today, and that reminder stopped me in my tracks and my frustration began to drift away and tears welled up in my eyes, and I knew that I needed to change my attitude and that even though things get really hard at times, it is but just a moment and will pass.

I was also reminded that I have the privilege of finding myself through the work that I do. That is pretty amazing, don't you think?

All this information in what seemed like at least an hour, but turns out it was merely minutes. It is so awesome when promptings from the Holy Ghost come so quickly full of information. I love it! I love that I have the blessing of the Holy Ghost in my life. What a blessing it is to receive light and truth in this way.

7). Remember me mentioning that the sidewalk right outside our home lifted up? Well, I thought the garbage man caused the sidewalk to lift up, but apparently I was wrong. I called the city and they came out. They said it was sub damage. That's right. SUN Damage!!! Who knew that could happen? So now we have a big construction sign in the middle of our yard to warn people about the bump until the city comes out to fix it. I'm sure it's going to be several months before they get out here to do it. I'm just glad they knew what the problem was and acted fast to at least add the sign and respond to my call. That makes me happy.

8). I've got to get going on my new calling!!!. I have to reach out to those people that have to report to me to let them know how to reach me and find out if they have done the work. Time will tell. It's just harder to do without the Internet. I need to access the church website to do some things that will make reaching out a little easier. Looks like I will need to make another trip to the library this week. More on this later in the month.

9). There are some big changes taking place on our street, and quite frankly, we aren't very happy about them. We are losing two awesome families from our Carol Avenue family. One family is moving out of state, and the other is moving somewhere in town. I'm not sure exactly where. We drove past their houses this past week to see them both packing trucks with their belongings. This is happening way to fast. I'm so sad to see this happening. Kevin served in Young Men's with both of the men of the families and we are going to miss them all.

10). This afternoon I need to mail a package for Kevin. It's going to Maryland. Someone is going to review some medical records for us. More to come on this

11). Kevin has been going some time without his pain medications simply because he does not want to be on them. The last time we were at the doctor they said the medications do not actually work anyway. So, he has another appointment with the pain specialist coming up this week to make some of those decisions, and to go over his recent MRI. I like that Kevin wants to be off all the pain medication, but at the same time I want him to be pain free too. It's such a hard decision. I just hope he feels comfortable with whichever decision he makes. I don't want him suffering because he is worried about the costs and things. I want him to be comfortable and happy. That is all I want. The poor guy has been through so much. He deserves a little happiness. More on this too.

12). I'm sure you have heard all about the protests in Texas and the Police Officers that were killed. Well, after that there were a few protests in Phoenix. One right after the shootings, and then another just last week. In fact, the last one was a little too close to home for me. It was right down the street from my office at work. In fact, we received an email telling us which areas to avoid. I was grateful for that because I normally go right down that street every single day to get to and from work. Then last week we received notice that there were several protests across the country. The email was to instruct those that live close to their locations to avoid those areas as well. I am so grateful I work for an employer who is concerned about all of their employees welfare and who takes the time to warn all of us. It is an awesome thing!

13). Social Security update...I received a voicemail message from someone at Social Security requesting to speak to Kevin because they need to verify some information. Seriously!?? They couldn't do that when we called them a week ago? When Kevin tried to call them their office was closed. So he will call tomorrow. I'm sure this means we won't be receiving anything this month now. So frustrating! We've been hanging on by a thread since well before we filed the claim back in December, which means our stress level is through the roof. We just need these people to get on with it. Give us your answer for heavens sakes! Arg!! I'm a little frustrated. Can you tell? Baby steps I guess. ~smile~smile~

This post has taken several days to complete. I'm sorry for the delays. I'll try and be quicker with future posts. Take care my friends, and we will talk again soon.